Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2025-06-23
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
At a little after midnight on Monday, two roaches, one large, one small, greet me in the bathroom. I say, "Good evening." They don't respond, but don't run away either.
We get the roaches on occasion. They don't bother me. I'm told that they're due to the birds' nests on the roof. People are supposedly working on relocating the nests, but, with all the missiles, this isn't a great time to be working on a roof. Even the fiddlers are phoning it in.
At just before 3 AM, the voice of a relative in Continual Care awakens me, calling my name. No one else is in the room. Still, I remember enough of my family's streak of occasional, inexplicable clairvoyance that I pay attention to these things. I get up, put my sneakers on, and get a drink of water. The alert sounds about a minute later.
I head down to the nearer downstairs shelter, as usual, along with other residents and neighbors. The chairs are all facing toward a raised platform. There must have been a guided activity there yesterday. People quickly move them around into the usual clusters and vague circles.
We don't hear any booms or further alarms. We eventually head back.
As we wait for the elevators, our most annoying resident blasts Dean Martin from his Spotify app. No one wants to hear it. He doesn't seem to care. "Everyone loves music!" No. Not this music. Not now.
The next alarm is at about 10:30 AM. We all head down again. The shelter is as crowded as I've ever seen it. I take a seat at the far end of the room.
Several of the residents sit in chairs in a circle. One of the staff sits cross-legged on the floor at the center. Most of those residents are quite short. She's very tall. For once, they almost see eye-to-eye.
We don't get much word of what's happening. Eventually, we get the all-clear. On the way out, the staff member says to me in English, "Wow, that took a long time."
Back upstairs, I look through the news as I drink some more coffee.
On a local news site, a professional makeup artist details how to look good in a shelter in the middle of the night: tinted moisturizer, a bit of waterproof mascara, therapeutic lipstick in a natural shade, and hair kept together by a small clip or rubber band. Avoid anything that requires precision or careful smudging; it will only smudge further into a mess. I save the article, but doubt that I'll refer to it much, since I don't do drag.
At the start of the summer, as usual, jellyfish are swarming toward our shore. The beaches are officially closed, but jellyfish aren't known for keeping up on news alerts or responding to missile alarms.
An expert structural engineer, stuck overseas for the moment, suggests that we should rethink our approach to building shelters. These have to change every few decades, as we get attacks from bigger and bigger bombs.
Apparently, for a shelter to withstand a direct hit from what Iran is throwing at us nowadays, it would have to have concrete walls ten feet thick. Still, extremely few buildings have taken these hits. We have been careful to build new buildings with integrated shelters. Many buildings have taken damage to spaces closest to the outside, with minor casualties. The expert claims that those impacts would have completely destroyed most buildings in other parts of the world.
News sites are now showing the damage at a retirement community nearby that was hit in the past few days. It turns out that it was my relatives’ number two pick, had they not moved in here to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers over a decade ago.
All of the residents have survived. Those from the nursing home area were moved to another facility nearby. (I have heard its name announced on my bus line, but have never paid attention to where it is.) Other residents were taken to a neighborhood school before moving into a ritzy hotel along the shore. (That same hotel, if memory serves, is where friends were put up while waiting for a flight out of here at the start of the Gaza war. The governor of Florida, normally not known for doing useful things, had arranged for the flight. Word has it that he has done so again this time.)
Hmm. In the previous paragraph, I had written, at first, "at the start of the war." Two weeks ago, that wouldn't have been ambiguous. Now it is. Is what we're experiencing now a new, simultaneous war or a new phase of the ongoing one? Eventually, historians may sort it out. Or, perhaps, not.
Police have started arresting people for refusing to let other people into their shelters. That's the law: if someone during an alarm needs to get into your shelter, whether you know them or not, you have to let them in. Period. Video on YouTube showed one guy, in a fake American sheriff's outfit and cap, slamming the door in people's faces. He's among those arrested.
A major local rehabilitation center, a twenty-minute walk from here, posts how they're handling things. They have sent some patients home who could handle it. They're providing care, counseling, and physiotherapy to them via Zoom. About 130 patients remain. Within protected areas in the complex, the center has established three day care centers for children of employees.
Schools here remain closed. City officials have said that they're particularly looking to restore special education classes, since they recognize the importance of routine to many of the students.
News reports say that some ultra-orthodox schools have refused to shut down during the crisis. The Education Minister said that he would sanction the schools, then said that he wouldn't. At least, I think that's where that stands.
A military funeral is being held this evening at the cemetery next to my old office. A WhatsApp message from the city ahead of time warns us that there will be ceremonial gunfire. I don't know who the funeral is for.
In mid-afternoon, I go down to the medical area to swap out my stick of daily medications and visit my family in Continual Care. We get out of there for a while and sit in the relatively quiet lobby. I greet people who pass by and introduce some of the newer residents to my family.
In months past, one of them, who lives down the hall from me, had brought wonderful sweet challahs to the Dining Hall for Shabbat supper. I would slice them up and deliver them to the other residents at the tables as my relative who had said Kiddush would distribute the wine. She apologized for not having brought them recently. It turns out that she had been getting them from her brother, who runs a gourmet bakery nearby. It's been closed due to the war. I let her know that I had gotten a special, beautiful challah knife for the House, which I have stashed within the table where we make the blessing. We all look forward to getting to use it.
In sitting here and writing this, I find that I'm coughing less than before. The medicine I'm taking seems to be working. Good.
I need to do some cleaning up after I send this. The cleaner will be here first thing in the morning, and I would prefer not to feel embarrassed by how she finds things. In summer or winter, war or peace, her arrival is one thing on which I can depend.
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Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me at that Las Vegas address, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
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L'hitraot.